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Technology Stocks : Leap Wireless International (LWIN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (2421)	7/27/2002 3:18:30 PM
From: FactsOnly	Respond to of 2737

Re : possibility of Leap (Cricket) handset ending up in Latin America (and, being useful in Latin America). Any 800 CDMA phone will work in any other 800 CDMA network. Same goes with 1900 CDMA networks. Some networks will require slightly different user interface in the phone software. For example some networks require you to dial your own phone number to access voice mail, where another network will require *86 to be dialed. As of today the software differences are not enough to cause any inconvenience. When 3G services launch the software that each network requires will be more radically different, but the basic functionality such as making voice calls will be the same regardless of software flavor. All you need is Master Subsidy Lock, which is the password to service programming. You have to program the phone with a phone number and other things to activate it in a network. If you have the tools and the software, you can even load a new software in to the phone. Possession of such tools and software of course would be illegal. Hacking the MSL of a phone that does not belong to you is also illegal. How can you prevent this? You can make it so hacking of the MSL would be practically impossible. Or you can have all service providers access a database of stolen ESNs, and police themselves. However, I think the main problem is South American carriers actually are not motivated to prevent such phones coming to their markets. This is surprising because this problem also haunts S. American carriers. They would like to subsidize the phones, but they are afraid the customer will stop paying the bill and move on to some other service provider.